"With population shrinking, Germany worries for future; At issue, attitudes on immigration, working mothers" by Suzanne Daley and Nicholas Kulish | New York Times, August 14, 2013
SONNEBERG, Germany — At first glance, this town in central Germany, with rows of large houses built when it was a thriving center of toy manufacturing, looks tidy and prosperous. But Heiko Voigt, the deputy mayor here, can point out dozens of vacant homes that he doubts will ever be sold.
Germany's Detroit?
The reality is that the German population is shrinking and towns like this one are working hard to hide the emptiness....
Maybe you should head on over to the golf course for ideas.
There is perhaps nowhere better than the German countryside to see the dawning impact of Europe’s plunge in fertility rates over the decades, a problem that has frightening implications for the economy and the psyche of the Continent.
The earth being slowly depopulated by pollution, chemicals, vaccines? Some have suggested such a thing (as opposed to the mass genocide endgame plots), with the $ide benefit to certain indu$tries. Do it nice and $low. Now roll up that $leeve or tip back that $kull.
Or is it just an excuse to insource cheap foreign labor like the immigration reform "debate" back here in AmeriKa, the 21st-century historical version of the Nazis if all past history is taken at face value?
What's strange is the Nazis of Hitler's day stood against the international banking cartels that are now embodied in what we call the Federal Reserve system. Mussolini even called out true fascism, the merger of corporate and government (hello, Amurkn, hello?). Looking back now those guys were certainly no cuddly teddy bears; however, they appear to be nationalists who more than anything were the greatest threat ever to the certain interests and chosen ethnic groups. Thus they are demonized as history's greatest villains by those very same interests that provide us with our information -- state ejewkazhaun and jewspapers.
And the flattening of German and Japanese cities by allied forces in what were certainly equitable if not even more egregious war crimes than those alleged of the Germans? A few remarks in history books about the destruction, but when you are on the winning side.... you write the book.
In some areas, there are now abundant overgrown yards, boarded-up windows and concerns about sewage systems too empty to work properly. The workforce is rapidly graying, and assembly lines are being redesigned to minimize bending and lifting.
In its most recent census, Germany discovered it had lost 1.5 million inhabitants. By 2060, specialists say, the country could shrink by an additional 19 percent, to about 66 million.
Demographers say a similar future awaits other European countries, and the issue grows more pressing every day as Europe’s seemingly endless economic troubles accelerate the decline.
That's real strange because I was told they were looking pretty good. Yeah, a few problems, but otherwise.... sigh.
But bogged down with failed banks and dwindling budgets, few are in any position to do anything about it.
Then there hasn't been a recovery and they are not out of depression; either that, or the top 7% that is gaining is covering up for the 93% falling behind (like here in AmeriKa).
Germany, however, an island of prosperity, is spending heavily to find ways out of the doom-and-gloom predictions, and it would seem ideally placed to show the Continent the way.
What, they kick the central banking scheme like Hitler (that got some people real mad)? Or are they doing the wrong thing by borrowing more?
So far, though, even while spending $265 billion a year on family subsidies, Germany has proved only how hard it can be. That is in part because the solution lies in remaking values, customs, and attitudes in a country that has a troubled history with accepting immigrants and where working women with children are still tagged with the label “raven mothers,” implying neglectfulness.
Gees, you guys really can't kick those Nazi tendencies. Now give back that family zubzidy so vee can pay bankerz!!!
If Germany is to avoid a major labor shortage, specialists say, it will have to find ways to keep older workers in their jobs, after decades of pushing them toward early retirement, and it will have to attract immigrants and make them feel welcome enough to make a life here.
I guess that is good in a way. You get to keep your job if not retirement benefits. As for the whole Germans still seeking a pure race thing, I'm just not buying the division flying at me from the mouthpiece newspaper. Aren't most of them Ottoman Turks responsible for the Armenian Holocaust?
Look at me; my newspaper has me going back even further in time.
It will also need to get more women into the workforce while at the same time encouraging them to have more children, a difficult change for a country that has long glorified stay-at-home mothers.
Those sexist, racist, anti-Semitic Germans!
With high unemployment rates across most of Southern and Eastern Europe, Germany is in a good position to increase its labor pool by plucking the best and the brightest from its neighbors, and it has begun to do so.
Hmmmmmmmmmm!
Yet, with hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs unfilled, some executives believe Germany should change its immigration laws and accept foreign credentials to compete for workers with other aging countries.
They are giving us the same damn excuses over here!
Germany’s experience with integrating foreign workers, particularly the country’s large Turkish minority, has proved difficult, and many government officials and business leaders are examining Germany’s culture.
But whether they will succeed is unclear. A recent study found that more than half the Greeks and Spaniards who came to Germany left within a year. “I think the answer is that we need to look outside Europe,” Klingholz said.
Oh. What's the EU got to say about that?
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Related: Immigrants key to future, Merkel says
Oh, yeah, I forgot. It's a woman that runs Germany. So much for the sexism.
"Germany notes smaller population" New York Times, June 01, 2013
BERLIN — It’s as if Leipzig, Hanover, and Dresden had all disappeared in the blink of an eye....
The allied bombings of WWII?
Chancellor Angela Merkel had been concerned about the shrinking numbers of taxpayers and able-bodied workers.
Oh.
The question of how the coming, smaller generations would pay back German debts, much less the mounting liabilities and guarantees meant to contain the eurozone debt crisis is a central one here.
Man, it REALLY IS a BANKER'S MOUTHPIECE!
What are they working on now, WWII debt?
The census news, that Germany has 80.2 million people rather than 81.7 million, announced Friday by the Federal Statistical Office, accelerates an existing trend.
How a country known for its precision and exactitude could miss the mark so badly on something as simple as its population is a result of another German preoccupation: privacy.
The privacy is a whole other matter, what with the NSA snooping scandal encompassing the globe (that grunt you heard was Hitler's fried corpse ejaculating the last spit of semen at such a thought); however, it does draw other questions regarding the sloppy record keeping regarding certain things.
Anyway, let's not spoil the Jewish narrative of history and stuff.
The past census, in 1987, was strenuously opposed by opponents who believed the government should not keep tabs on its citizens, which the Nazi regime abused.
That's why a lot of Americans are not too hot on the idea, but I guess we have gone far beyond that.
German officials believed that the registries kept by all municipalities gave them a good idea of how many residents they had. But foreigners who registered when they moved in, as required, apparently were leaving the country without ever unregistering from their apartments. In the process they created what statisticians call “card-index corpses,” phantom residents who lived in the records long after having left the country.
So who stole their identity and then looted?
“Demographers were trying to explain the healthy-migrant effect, why they were living to be 110 years old,” said Steffen Kröhnert, of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development. “It turns out they had moved back to their home countries and were only living in the registries.”
Who had control of those funds?
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Also see:
"In Germany, clash between Amazon, organized labor" by Nick Wingfield and Melissa Eddy | New York Times, August 05, 2013
NEW YORK — In the United States, technology giants like Amazon are often celebrated as fonts of innovation and jobs.
Our president was out pimping for them in a public relations photo-op!
But across the Atlantic — nein, non, no.
Even as President Obama spoke about middle-class jobs last week at an Amazon warehouse in Tennessee, Amazon was facing strikes at warehouses in Germany, its second-biggest market. Unions there say the company has imported American-style business practices — in particular, an antipathy to organized labor — that stand at odds with European norms.
Amazon has been criticized for its working conditions in the United States — but not nearly to the same extent as in Europe. On the surface, Amazon’s labor problems in Germany revolve around wages....
But it goes deeper than that?
Dave Clark, the company’s vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, said it sees unions as an intermediary that will want to have a say on everything from employee scheduling to building designs to changes in processes for handling and packaging orders.
God damn workers!
Amazon prizes its ability to quickly introduce changes like these into its warehouses that it believes improve the experience of its customers, he said.
“This really isn’t about higher wages,” Clark said. “It isn’t a cost question for us. It’s about what our relationship is with our people.”
Someone once famously said when someone says it isn't about the money, it's about the money.
In the United States, Amazon successfully thwarted efforts to unionize. The scene may play out differently in Germany.
Oh, that is what it is about?
At a strike in June hundreds of workers gathered outside of the gates of the Amazon plant in Leipzig to hear Frank Bsirske, the head of ver.di, a powerful service workers union with some 2.3 million members across Germany. He played on Amazon’s motto of “Work hard. Have fun. Make history,” telling the strikers they should take it to heart.
“You are making history by striking,” Bsirske told the crowd to cheers and whistles. “You are making history by demanding higher wages. We are not going to let a big American company come here and play Wild West. This is a clash of cultures.”
But will it be recorded and related right?
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Also see: Strike nearly grounds Lufthansa
Related: Flying From France to England
Also see:
"Richard III burial prompts legal battle" by Jill Lawless | Associated Press, August 17, 2013
LONDON — Richard was deposed and killed in a battle near Leicester in 1485 and quickly buried without a coffin in a now-demolished church in the city, which is 100 miles north of London. A skeleton found under a Leicester parking lot last year was identified as the king through DNA tests, bone analysis, and other scientific study.
The discovery thrilled history buffs — as well as Richard’s supporters, who hope to rehabilitate the image of a king whose villainous reputation was cemented by William Shakespeare’s ‘‘Richard III.’’
But it sparked a scuffle over where the last British monarch to die in battle should be reburied....
I think all leaders should do just that: LITERALLY LEAD the TROPPS THEY SEND TO WAR! I'll bet a bunch of them would stop post-haste!
Richard belonged to the House of York, one of two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty involved in a 15th-century battle for the crown known as the Wars of the Roses....
Yeah, well, he's dead now so he won't care.
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I suppose it is all right to revise some things.
Related: Royal Arrogance in the Face of Austerity
